In both the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, I include four business philosophies which are critical to all types of virtual and remote professionals, and business owners today – Focus, Experimentation, Momentum and Reflective Pause.

In my work with teams, and individuals, over the last fifteen years in my business I’ve seen that these make the difference between good and exceptional.

With this in mind, over the next few weeks I’ll be taking a deeper dive into the realm of these four areas looking at:

• What it means in today’s business context
• Why it’s important
• Ideas for putting it into practice
• And resources you may want to follow up around

​A reminder that if you like these topics you may want to check out my weekly Facebook Live, where I put into voice quick planning ideas and activities. You will find it over at the PlanDoTrack Facebook page.

Let’s turn our attention to the first topic of FOCUS.

We live and operate today in what is often considered an era of distraction. Our ability to focus and keep our eye on what is important to us, and to our work, is key.
Did you know that:

• The average worker receives 90 emails in the span of a day?
• It takes 22 minutes to get back on track after an interruption?

It’s not uncommon for workers (not just managers) to be spending 5-10 hours a week in meetings? I’ve met managers who wear the badge of
Focused work and attention are critical, and essential in order to create foundations, and grow a business.

How To- Creating Focus:

• Consider building in focused blocks of work – turn off email, move into a conference room, or take your work mobile. What will give you the space and time to do the focused work you need in your job/business?
• Leverage the circadian rhythm. Science continues to show that we have different times of day when we are at our best. What are those times for you? What can you do to ensure you have focused work times within those blocks.
• Create your to-do list of Top 5. With change being the norm for many workplaces, having a top five list each day is important. It’s interesting as the writing of James Clear has pointed to the early 1900s productivity hack from Ivy who asserted that a focus on a top 6 list every day would lead to productivity advances. Whether it’s five or six, being able to check core items off the list can help with efficiency and also motivation.
• Know your priorities – and your teams. Priorities also keep us grounded. They will help us shape our top five as well as discern where our time needs to go. What are your priorities for the week? The month? The quarter?

 
Refer To - Focus
When: The Science of Perfect Timing – Daniel Pink
Atomic Habits – James Clear
Outer Order and Inner Calm – Gretchen Rubin
Deep Work and Digital Minimalism – Cal Newport

Check out my April 3, 2019 Facebook Live 

Wishing you all the best,
Jennifer

This week it’s launch time! You’ve done it!

Over the last four weeks (or more) you have been working on your free offer or giveaway. This is key in terms of letting others know what you do and offering them something of value.
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Doing this regularly can help further develop your reputation and let people know what you have to offer.

This week as you go to launch, consider the varying ways you are going to continually let people know about this offering. Some possible ways might include:

• In your signature line
• On your blog
• In your newsletter
• Via your network
• Instagram post
• LinkedIn Status update

What are the ways you are going to let everyone know about this?

Have a great day!
​Jennifer

Over the last few weeks you have been busy working on your free giveaway. It’s now been drafted, and you have figured out where it’s going to go. It’s not quite ready yet!

Take some time this week to-do a last review and perhaps get some feedback. Maybe you have a routine of passing materials off to your loved ones for a quick second set of eyes. Maybe you have a community that supports you on this. Who can give the project a review?
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This week you will also want to focus in on how and where you are going to promote this. Don’t forget the 7 to 11 times rule. The landscape of free offerings is super-saturated at times.  You will want to make sure you are regularly talking about this and letting people know that it exists. If you haven’t done so, make a list of WHERE, WHEN and HOW you are going to let people know about it (Here’s a challenge - make sure you have at least 11 different touchpoints!).

Share with us what you have been working on – you can share it here in the comments, or over on the Effective Group Coaching Facebook page.

Best,
​Jennifer

This week our attention is going to shift to quickly explore 5 key skills in project management. Whether you are creating an e-book, designing a new program or deciding on new systems for your business, as solopreneurs we are regularly managing projects as a team of one.
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In project management, historically, the foundation has been that for any project there is a triple constraint – time, budget and scope. Like a triangle, it is said that these things are fixed (at least in traditional project management). So if my budget gets reduced, it might take a little longer to do things as we now need to do them in-house OR the scope of the project may change given that we no longer have resources to complete a six month project, so instead we may need to do a three month project.
 
With this in mind the first project management skill I think is important is getting good at identifying project requirements.

• What is the project?
• What are the deadlines?
• What are the milestones along the way? These are checkpoint activities where you can see progress?
• What resources are needed? Project manager of all kinds have operated in this framing of being aware of the triple constraint ….

Other key questions to be asking here are:

• What is the project scope?
• What’s involved with it?
• What is IN focus? What is outside of focus (or scope)?

 
Spending additional time making sure we have this first step of project requirements right, helps to make the rest of it flow more smoothly (usually!).
 
It was in this phase of project identification that I first became aware of the adage that “10 minutes of planning can save 2 hours of unfocused effort”. So true!
 
With this is in mind, let’s look at five key project management skills that solopreneurs will want to boost:

1. Knowledge of self and skills – Self- awareness is key to solopreneurial success. Knowing what we are good at, what we can learn, and when we need to reach out to others, can make the difference between a project that flows and one that gets deadlocked or becomes a source of frustration. In knowing ourselves, we want to be able to identify key skills which are important in the immediate term, as well as ones we will be using regularly. Creating a robust network to reach out to, to find others short term who can round out of skill needs, is critical for solopreneurial success. “No person is an island!”.
2. Time estimation – Estimating the amount of time required for a task is also critical. One part of this equation is getting better at knowing how long tasks really do take. Part of this is experience, and we may have peers and mentors that can advise us. It can be useful to build in some contingency time for our own learning curve, given that tasks will take longer to complete the first few times we do them, or if we do them infrequently. I’m thinking of a recent experience I had where I had to set up a welcome auto-responder for a give-away. I do this about once a year and while I should “retain it”, it was as if the task was totally new!
3. Clarifying what’s required - Given that most of us are working on our own, we will be needing to reach out to others to help us get work done. Whether it’s going to a site like Fiverr or Upwork, finding good experts (graphic designers, financial experts) that can work with us to make our projects happen, is crucial. In making this successful, we need to be good at clarifying what’s required (think – What will a successful end result for this project/task look like? – be specific, get granular), as well as finding people.
4. Relationship Building and Negotiation – At the end of the day, things need to get done and projects need to get completed. If we can’t complete projects, it may have a significant impact on the business. As solopreneurs, we can’t go to a boss to negotiate the triple constraint – i.e. give me more time to complete this or give me more money – we have that under our control. In some ways this makes project management that much easier. What is may mean is that we need to go out and enroll others to our projects – requiring both relationship-building and negotiation skills.

What do you see as essential project management skills for solopreneurs? Which ones have you been leaning into as a project team of one?

Share with us using the comments below.

Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010)
Potentials Realized
Phone: 416-996-8326
Check out the November 2018 CBB Book Club Call entitled "2019 Planning. Already?". You can view it here.

Keeping Neuroscience at the Forefront of Good Design - © Jennifer Britton
Photo Credit - Britton, 2017 (Excerpt, Effective Virtual Conversations)
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In Effective Virtual Conversations I share the journeys of two professionals who work in the virtual space – Jane and Jo. In chapter 5, Jane reflects on what it takes to incorporate science into her work with groups in the virtual space. I highlight eight different areas of focus.

We want to design with the learner’s entire self in mind, brain included. This month at the Learning Lab Design Studio. I explored eight different neuroscience elements you will want to keep in mind as you go to design your own programming.

As you read through today's blog post, consider what elements you want to be focusing on in your work:

 These include:

1. Fight or Flight – the Amygdala Highjack
2. Mirror Neurons
3. PEA/NEA
4. Micro-moments
5. Positive Interactions
6. The Social Brain
7. Oxytocin
8. Latency and Recency Effects

Fight or Flight:
Under times of stress our brains may revert to their more reptilian past, and we may go into “Fight” or “flight” mode – looking to fight or wanting to run away respectively. What can you do to create more certainty and safety for your learners and in your design.
Mirror Neurons – Just like a mirror, we are influenced by those around us. The notion of mirror neurons indicates that our brain will “fire” in ways that is similar to those we are in dialogue around. With this in  mind, what is the environment you want to create for your groups?
PEA/NEA – Explored by Richard Boyatzis and his team, the Positive Emotional Attractor Network (PEA) is a series of components of the brain, which support in “opening up” the brain. When we ask questions like “What’s possible?” or “What would you do if you won 50M dollars?” all active this network, and create an open space. Consider what you can be doing to incorporate these questions and/or work around vision in your programming.
Micro-moments: Barbara Frederickson writes that change and connection occurs through what she calls “micro-moments”. Consider how you can be building this into your design, or getting your group to become more aware of their significant micro-moments.
Positive Interactions – The highly disputed Losada Ratio found that in order to “thrive” we need three positive interactions to one. While the ratio is disputed mathematically, it is valuable to think about the ratio of positive to negative conversational elements. John Gottman found that this ratio is closer to 7 to 1 for teams that thrive. What can you do in your design to boost the habit of providing positive interactions with your group/team members?
The Social Brain – The notion of the social brain is multi-fold and includes the notion that we learn through and in connection with others. What are you doing to boost peer connection?
Oxytocin – also known as the bonding hormone, this hormone is important for teamwork and group cohesion. Be aware that this is activated through touch and togetherness. What can you do in your design to leverage this “feel good” neurochemical?
Latency and Recency Effects – We remember the start and end of things but everything in the middle can get muddied, unless it is memorable. What can you do to create something novel mid way to loc k in learning? Consider visual anchors, polls etc.”
End of Excerpt. Copyright 2017-2018, Jennifer Britton. All Rights Reserved

To read more about program design the virtual space pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations.

Resources to explore
Chapter 5 – Effective Virtual Conversations, for more on these 8 elements
Barbara Frederickson – PositivityRatio.com
Richard Boyatzis NEA/PEA: The role of the positive emotional attractor in vision and shared vision: toward effective leadership, relationships, and engagement
Richard E. Boyatzis,1,* Kylie Rochford,1 and Scott N. Taylor. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4439543/
Mirror Neurons: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-athletes-way/201402/do-mirror-neurons-help-create-social-understanding  AND https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/brain-myths/201212/mirror-neurons-the-most-hyped-concept-in-neuroscience
 
What are your specific steps to incorporate neuroscience into your work?
Enjoy the start to your week,
Jennifer

.Jennifer Britton
Author of Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), 
Potentials Realized - Supporting Coaches, Businesses, Leaders and Teams 
Is 2019 your year to take it ahead? Join me for one of our two annual groups - The Learning Lab and Design Studio (focusing on program design) or the Coaching Biz Growth Lab (focusing on coaching business development)
Phone: 416-996-8326
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